Sunday Republican (Springfield, MA)
Author: JACQUELINE WALSH
The volunteers available for a call are drastically reduced for those hours when most are working out of town.
A blaze breaks out in a hilltown at the time of day that every volunteer fire department chief dreads.
Midnight?
At 5 a.m.?
At 3 p.m. on a weekend?
Actually, it’s any time between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on a weekday, because most of the firefighters will be out of town, at work.
“We have 28 firefighters,” said Ashfield Fire Chief Douglas Field. “It’s enough in the evenings, but on weekdays, it can be very, very disastrous.”
Only three or four Ashfield firefighters are in town during the middle of a workday, he said.
In Bernardston, only six of 26 firefighters work in town.
In Southwick, six to 12 volunteers will answer a call during work, compared to 20 to 30 after work or on weekends.
In Buckland, only three or four of the town’s 15 firefighters live in town.
With many women working and family members busy commuting, chauffeuring children and trying to get chores done at night, fire departments are finding it tough to attract volunteers.
“We always have problems getting people,” Field said. “I’m not sure why people don’t want to step forward.”
Even Field himself works out of town, at Rule Cutting Tool in South Deerfield. But the company, like many employers, allows him to leave to fight fires.
In rural Hardwick, sandwiched between Worcester and Springfield, the number of volunteers has dwindled in recent years, according to Fire Chief Raymond Walker.
“It think it is the time factor, the commitment,” Walker said.
In Brimfield, Assistant Fire Chief Steve Denning said his department works with a roster of 25 volunteers.
“That’s a pretty good working number, but we’re always looking for more people to help out,” Denning said.
Unfortunately, he said, new mandates from the state which put firefighters on a grueling schedule of inspections keep some people from considering the job.
“There’s only so much volunteer time you can put in,” Denning said.
But the big crunch comes during the day.
“Our biggest killer is the daytime,” said Walker, the Hardwick fire chief. “The number of people actually working downtown has dwindled. It used to be a dairy farm community; now most people work out of town.”
Southwick Fire Chief Don Morris said that “when the town was just an agricultural community and small businesses, it was easier to get manpower during the day.”
Also, many Southwick firefighters were available in the past during the day since they worked the second or third shift at Hamilton Standard or Pratt & Whitney, two businesses that no longer have facilities in Southwick.
Volunteers who are available during the day are Belchertown Fire Chief Ted Bock’s top priority.
“For the most part, after 4 in the afternoon I get a very good response,” he said. “During the daytime, it’s touch-and-go sometimes because there’s not as many people around.”
Some employers are good about allowing their workers to leave for a fire.
“If there’s a large fire, we can pick up six to eight extra people who work within 30 minutes of the town,” Southwick Chief Morris said.
There is also relief in the form of mutual aid: Other fire departments are called in to help.
Goshen Fire Chief Francis Dresser said some volunteer fire departments have been able to alleviate their manpower needs by extending mutual aid agreements with surrounding communities to include firefighters as well as equipment.
“Without mutual aid, no way could we do it, especially out here with a volunteer force and no hydrants,” said Brimfield Chief Denning.
Having town employees such as highway department workers on the volunteer rolls also ensures a certain degree of availability. In Goshen, four of the 25-member volunteer force are on the town’s highway crew, according to Dresser.
“You know you’ve got those four,” he said.
The other obstacle volunteer departments face that full-time departments don’t is the time it takes to get trucks to the fire.
Firefighters wear beepers, have radios in their cars and set their boots upright in their bedrooms, so they can get to a fire quickly. But that alone can’t eliminate the time it takes to get to the station to retrieve the trucks.
“It’s always nice to have someone right at the fire station,” said Bernardston Fire Chief Lloyd Grover. “It cuts down on the response time.”
But it’s not such a grim picture. Goshen Chief Dresser said that, whenever a fire breaks out, there always seems to be enough people responding, even if it takes a little time.
“The first couple of minutes you don’t think there’s anybody there. Then you turn around and there’s a deluge,” Dresser said.